Aliens and Exiles-Christians Were Outsiders in the Culture. Should That Be Us Too?

1 Peter 2:11

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

There is a turning in this part of Peter's letter.  It is entitled in one bible version “Live as Servants of God”.  Two levels of existence are being discussed here.  From the grander view of the mercy of the Lord, Peter is speaking now of how to exist as members of God’s Kingdom in the wider world.  As the followers of Christ were beginning to separate from the Synagogue, their place in the world was coming into question. 

Remember that Paul began as a persecutor of the followers of Christ.  It was not organized as the persecutions would become, but already, Peter gives advice on how to life for Christ.

But secondly, Peter is laying out how Jesus has saved us, yet the union with Christ is not complete, our persons are not yet fully perfected in Christ, sinfulness still exists within us.  How must we respond to that?

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles—they are outsiders, outsiders to the Gentile populations that surround them and outsiders to the Jewish faith from which they have emerged.  The focus of the mission has changed.  Jesus did his work within the Jewish community, but it has been moving beyond that community.  Which is why even the Jewish adherents to Christ are being pushed out.

to abstain from the desires of the flesh—a dichotomy within the human being is being discussed.  “Flesh” is a convenient label for the sinfulness of humanity.  “Desires” provide a convenient description of sinful behaviors, ‘infecting’ the flesh.   

that wage war against the soul.—this is the other side of the dichotomy, the ‘soul’, that which is redeemed within the human.  The bible speaks elsewhere of a renewed fleshly body, we will be created anew.  But in the meantime, how does one speak of the battle that goes on inside each of us?  Trying to live more as Christ, but still subject to the weaknesses of the flesh?

Mercy, not Punishment...Love, not Judgment

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

“This is that of which I speak”, which is my annoying rendition of “That’s what I’m talking about!”  Mercy, thank you Lord for Your mercy.  It is mercy that is all too often forgotten about in today’s world of the people of God.  Ignorance begets mercy.  Uncertainty begets mercy.  Fence sitting begets mercy.  “Begets”, that is one of those King James words that means ‘give birth to’. 

There is a line in the movie “Casablanca” where Ingrid Bergman is so confuzzled (confused and puzzled) by all that is happening around her that she cannot even think straight any longer.  That is where Humphrey Bogart steps in and says that he will do the thinking for the both of them.  That is the relationship we have with God when we are confuzzled. 

I do not like preachers who claim that if you do not know Jesus well enough-on some subjective scale, your soul is in danger of eternal hell. Those preachers are trespassing on the foundations of judgment and the bible is very clear about judgment.  God handed that over to Jesus to dispense.  It does not come with a Seminary degree, it does not come with ordination, it does not come with the soapbox when someone feels the urge to jump up and talk about Jesus.

The idea is that the human being is responsible for being ‘sure enough’ about their faith in Christ to arrive at a state of grace.  There is a theological expression for that.  It is called “works righteousness”.  That teaches that our salvation comes through the works that we do in our own lives, that we can somehow balance the scales at the end of our existences.  It defies what Paul taught, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” and it cheapens the grace that Jesus bought for us in his death and resurrection.  Why should Jesus be obedient even to death on the cross when salvation depends on our work?  If that were so, we should be the ones called upon to be obedient to death, even on the cross.

The fact is salvation is not like homework.  It would be far quicker for our kids if we, the parents, did their homework for them (that assumes we CAN do their homework).  It is cheating.  Salvation is not like that.  It is a free gift put on the table for everyone to take hold of.  You do not have to understand all the nuances to receive it.  You do not have to earn it.  You do not have to learn lessons to receive the bounty it offers.  God gives it to us.

And for anyone who thinks that God is a fool, because people will take advantage, I can only pause and blink my eyes repeatedly to hold my tongue and keep something from coming out that I will have to confess later.  Because it is GOD and no one puts something over on God.  God made us, God loves us, God saves us, by His mercy, even from our own ignorance.

Thus is the way of God.

God's People: In or Out....How Do We Know Where We Are?

1 Peter 2:10

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.  

There is nuance of meaning in this phrase.  It has a couple of reference points that would be familiar to the audience.  To the New Testament folks, like ourselves, it looks at what we were before and after we came to Christ, before and after we became God’s people.  Humanity loves dualism, white and black, good and bad.  And this is an excellent representation of that.  You have God or you do not have God, it is one or the other.  The question that plagues many people is seeking clarity to know if they have God or not.

People knowing the Old Testament can look back to the time before God chose Abraham, before God’s people came into the world.  But I think Peter is considering something more immediate.

Maybe you remember the time that you were not a member of a ‘people’, when you existed in the world, trying to find your way.  Then along came a Jesus experience and…now what?  Being God’s people, does that demand we belong to a church?  Is that where the people are to be found?  This is the problem of black and white thinking, if you are not convinced you are on the white side, the automatic assumption is that you are on the black side of it.  Thus, if you are not convinced you are of God’s people, you are automatically excluded from God’s people, with all those others who are not a ‘people’ at all.

Dual thinking does little good for humanity.  It is fine for God.  God knows who belongs to God and who does not.  We can become paranoid trying to figure out what God thinks about us.  If we have doubts about God, does God have doubts about us?  Is there no gray area while trying to figure things out?  I believe we have to flip the equation.

Those individuals who are ‘not a people’ know they are not.  They have rejected God, they are out for their own desires and fulfillment, they have made a clear and persistent choice about the kind of life they will lead, and God is not a part of the equation, at least not in this lifetime. 

But for the doubter, the questioner, the wonderer, the paranoid, the fearful, the rejected, the broken, the reprobate, everyone who is unsure of or feels they are undeserving of a relationship with God, take a minute to thank God that He is in control.  Because you are in until you choose to deal yourself out.  God does not turn his back on us, we turn our backs on Him.

If you are told that because you are not sure of your relationship with Jesus that your eternal soul is in jeopardy, read on to the next posting about the next piece of this couplet.

You Have Seen Before And After Pictures-Here Is A Bible Version

1 Peter 2:10

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

Peter is preaching to those who have come to the Lord.  That is the outline that proceeds along Chapter 2 of his letter.  Rid yourselves of the bad stuff, come and get the good stuff, Jesus is the precious stone rejected by the people, but not by God, he calls upon them to become the Royal Priesthood.  Now we have a couple of couplets bound together, the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ of what God has done in their lives.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people;-- Such is ‘what’ happened.  They were alone, they were without the Lord, but that has changed.  There was the darkness, but they have come into the light.  There was what came before, but now there is a new creation in Jesus Christ.  There is a declared statement that it is God that binds them together, before they were not a people at all, just a bunch.  There is an implication of unity in God that, looking at the church today, could bring us doubts about what we humans have done with God’s church.

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.—What happened was that a people was formed in God.  How it happened was through the receipt of mercy.  The mercy comes through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  That is the way around the lex talionis, the law of a life for a life which is the judgment of breaking God’s law.  By Jesus taking our place, the cycle is broken and we are in the hands of our Lord through loving mercy, not a relationship of power dictated by God’s perfect justice.

Taken together, the same message is being shared.  There was the before and the after, without God and with God-the implication being that “with God” is the team to be chosen.  Up to know, Peter has been exhorting the believers about their Lord and the establishment of that relationship with the Lord.  Now he takes a moment to remind them of the alternative-which is not pleasing to consider.

There are Dangers of Abusive Scholarship About The BIble

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Peter takes us to a throwback to the first chapter of the gospel of John.  Actually, it may not be a throwback.  One of the great arguments of the New Testament scholarship community is when all the books were written.  They were not arranged in chronological order in the New Testament.  Paul’s letters are probably the earliest pieces written down, followed by the rest. 

In this regard, it is possible that Peter published this activity of Jesus, that He called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light, ahead of the publishing of the gospel of John, where this comes in the first chapter.  Such arguments are the stuff of doctrinal theses and scholarly debates, and they carry with them the risk of putting us to sleep.  

The downside of those arguments, of which was written first, is when a value judgement is attached to the chronology, i.e. the earlier is better or more “original” to Jesus.  That implies that Jesus’ words and deeds were somehow padded by the later authors, maybe ‘edited’ more to make a point, maybe not as ‘original’ as the stuff Jesus really did.  Scholars don’t come out and say that too often, but the implication is there.

The trouble is, there is no way, two thousand years later, to really know for sure.  And the trouble is engaging in this argument in the first place.  What I mean is that the WHOLE bible is useful for teaching, for uplifting, for preparing us for what God wants.  The fact is that Jesus called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.  Don’t dim the light with semantic arguments that chip away at the great truths of thousands of years of our faith.

Besides, we accept Jesus on faith, not "academic certainty".

His Life Was Greater Than The Mighty Acts That Made It Up

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

I am intentionally and artificially dividing up this phrase that hinges on Jesus.  The second part is Jesus’ grand action of our salvation.  The first part is a call to tell the story of Jesus as told in the gospels, to illustrate to us all that the power of Jesus comes through the acts that he has performed in our midst and on our behalf.

These are miracles, teachings, healings, castings out of demons, obedience, arguments, sometimes of a nearly violent nature.  Jesus defied the authorities in charge in the Promised Land.  He did things and said things that no one else was saying or doing at that time.  And perhaps the mightiest act was the love that was shared. 

There were other radical leaders in Jesus’ time.  A few of them are mentioned by the Jewish leadership in the book of Acts.  The referral point was this.  If they were not from God, the leader would rouse the rabble and fade away.  But if they-the disciples-following Jesus, were of God, how could any earthly power stand against the mighty acts performed of him and those who came after?

What Does One Call A Bunch of Christians? A Gaggle? A Flock? Something else?

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Today, the church understands that the power of God, given through Jesus Christ, is a light to the world, extended to all corners of the globe, drawing together all people regardless of color, ethnicity, race, or gender.  But if we read back that attitude onto the Bible, we could be left wanting.  While there are promises from Abraham forward that the worship of God is for all people, the reality is that, up until the time of the Romans, the worship of God was a provincial thing.  One people, the Jews, in one small part of the world, a strip of land along the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean, that was the center of the Godly world as we know it.  Other places had their own gods and goddesses, not real, but idols of wood and stone from our point of view, but real enough from their points of view. 

We are a “chosen race”.  God did this a few times.  He picked Adam and Eve, which fizzled, Seth after Abel was murdered by Cain, Noah and Mrs. Noah (not named in Genesis) after the flood, but finally settled on one couple, Abram and Sarai.  He called them out of a foreign land, marched them off to Israel as we know it today, changed their names to Abraham and Sarah, and made big promises of lots of descendants.  This was the Race that God Chose for Himself.  Jews claim descent through the line of Isaac, Muslims through the line of Ishmael, Christians through the Jewish tradition.

We are a “royal priesthood”.  God divided the human power running the land of Israel.  There was the high priest, a direct intermediary with God, and later, at the insistence of the people, a King, the ‘civil’ authority.  The original conception of the Promised Land was that God was in charge, that, through Jesus, the priesthood has been extended to all believers.

We are a “holy nation”.  In the Old Testament, the Promised Land was given to the people by God, a gift from the Almighty, thus Holy in its inception.  Through Jesus, this idea has been extended from the Promised Land to Creation itself, that all may come under the holiness and glory of God.

We are “God’s own people”.  God chose Abraham and his descendants to be God’s own people.  But that was one people among many, at first.  At first, it was just a barren couple who did not have their first child until they were both the ages of grandparents-maybe even great grandparents.  But God’s own people predates the choosing of Abraham.  It returns to the first Adam, whom God created, and was renewed in the Second Adam, our Lord Jesus, who brought us all back to Him.